Jeff Alessandrelli

Jeff Alessandrelli lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, where he cocurates the Clean Part Reading Series. He is the author of the little book Erik Satie Watusies His Way Into Sound (Ravenna Press, 2011) and the chapbook Don’t Let Me Forget to Feed the Sharks (Poor Claudia, 2012). Recent poetry appears in Gulf Coast and Boston Review.

A review of 'lo terciario/the tertiary'

The Spanish and English texts are rotated 180° relative to one another, such that the bilingual reader, halfway in, would rotate the book upside down to read the collection in its entirety. Or — if you are an anglophone reader, like myself — you are made literally aware that you are reading only one half of the book.

So begins “todas sus propiedades sensibles se han esfumado,” the opening poem of lo terciario/the tertiary, the newest collection released in May by Puerto Rican poet and translator Raquel Salas Rivera. Or it begins:

Rachel Zolf, 'Human Resources'

Jeff T. Johnson, Whitney Trettien, and Amy Paeth joined Al Filreis to discuss a passage from Rachel Zolf's Human Resources. The book was published by Coach House Books in Toronto in 2007. Our passages can be found on pages 73 through 79. All but one of these sections have been performed by Zolf at various readings, and these can be found and heard at her PennSound page. One of the sections had never been recorded, so the poet obliged us by making a new recording for our discussion — and this too has been added now to her PennSound page.